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OUR COUNTRY : ITS PRIDE AND ITS PERIL ; 



DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN 



HARVARD STREET BAPTIST CHURCH, 



Boston, Aug. 11, 18C1, 



RETURN OF THE PASTOR FROM SYRIA. 



DANIEL r. EDDY, D. D 



BOSTON: 

JOHN M. HEWES, 81 CORN HILL 

18G1. 









,»y 



\i 



61503 
'05 



DISCOURSE. 



Rnth 1 : 16, 17. 

Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from follow- 
ing AFTER THEE ; FOR WHITHER THOU GOEST, I WILL GO ; AND WHERE 
THOU LODGEST, I WILL LODGE ; THY PEOPLE SHALL HE MY PEOPLE, 
AND THY GOD MY GOD ; WHERE THOU DIEST, I WILL DIE, AND THERE 
WILL I BE BURIED. 

You will expect me, this morning, to depart some- 
what from the usual routine of pulpit ministrations, to 
leave the beaten path of theological discussion, and ad- 
dress you a few words of Christian salutation. The sep- 
aration of the past few months, renders this spot doubly 
sacred, and makes every countenance here look sunny 
and cheerful. I feel like one who has long been tempest- 
tossed, who has been beaten about by storms, who has 
watched for morning that he may see the beacon light at 
the entrance of the harbor, and who at length has 
reached the shore, and received the hand of welcome 
and the embrace of love. 

The language of the text is the language of my heart 
to-day. " Thy people shall be my people, and thy God 
my God." Suffer me to say that it is without affecta- 
tion that I make this appropriation of scripture language ; 
for, outside of the domestic circle, there is no relation- 
ship so tender as that of a pastor towards a people, some 
of whom, when burdened with sin, he has pointed to the 



cross of Christ ; whose bodies he has buried beneath the 
sacred waters of baptism ; whom he has united in wed- 
lock, uttering, amid the blessings of friends, the simple 
formula which of twain maketh one flesh ; to whose 
homes, in hours of sorrow, he has come with the consola- 
tions of religion, identifying himself alike with the mar- 
riage festival and the funereal woe ; and who in return 
has received from them comfort in his own sad hours, 
who has been borne up on their prayers, and who has 
ever received a joyful welcome to their firesides and 
homes. I think that the relationship between a faithful 
pastor and his flock will survive long after many of the 
ties of birth and blood are sundered and forgotten ; 
it will never cease, but will grow deeper, stronger, 
purer, holier, when with those who have been redeemed 
through his instrumentality, he shall present himself be- 
fore the Eternal throne, saying unto the Great Shepherd 
and Bishop of all — "Here am I, and the children which 
thou hast given me." 

But it is not this local application that I propose to 
give to the Scripture text announced. I think I have re- 
peated this language a hundred times within the past few 
months. It has again and again recurred to me, Avhile 
traversing the streets, or roaming over the cultivated 
hills of Protestant England ; while watching the fancy 
pleasures of gay, voluptuous Paris ; while wandering 
over the burning sands, or sitting beneath the beautiful 
palm trees of Egypt, and while slaking my thirst at 
Moses' wells in ancient Midian. It floated through my 
mind like the music of home, as I stood years ago in 
the deserted Forum of Imperial Kome, and as I trod 
amid the ftiding glories of Papal power the marble pave- 
ment of St. Peter's. It was the first passage I thought 



of as I rounded the Golden Horn, and looked up from the 
sparkUng waters of the Bosphorus upon the crescents 
and mmarets of Constantinople. It breathed uncon- 
sciously from my lips as I stood upon the Mount of 
Olives, and looked down across sad Grethsemane upon 
Jerusalem, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole 
earth ; and it came to me as the echo of an angel's lips, 
as I sat down on Mount Zion, and saw the daughters of 
Judah sweep by with tuneless harps. I heard it as a 
melodious sigh, amid the broken pillars and trampled 
pride of fallen Athens, and caught its echo from the 
heights of the Acropolis. 

But not to any of those climes did my heart go forth 
in the expression of the text ; towards none of those 
countries did I feel the tender sentiment of the Moabitess 
woman. I could not say to the Frenchman, the Italian, 
the Egyptian, the Turk or the Arab, " thy people shall 
be my people." I could not say to the Papist, the Mos- 
lem or the Jew, " thy God shall be my God." I could 
not turn to the inhabitants of London, Paris, Rome, 
Athens, or Jerusalem, and say to them, "where thou 
diest, I will die, and there will I be buried." 

My thoughts swept across the ocean, my arms stretched 
out towards America, — tJiis country^ her soil stained with 
blood shed in fratricidal war ; her banner torn and be- 
reft of half its stars ; her Constitution trampled beneath 
the feet of treacherous millions ; a plague spot, black as 
midnight, resting on one half her fair domain, but with 
all her faults and crimes, the noblest nation on the globe, 
yet to be recognized by all men as the grandest experi- 
ment of human history. 

To know and appreciate his own country, the Ameri- 
can must visit other lands, and mark the contrasts that 



every where appear. It is not enough that he reads 
what travellers have written of the wants and woes, the 
oppressions and tyrannies of other nations ; it is not 
enough that he sees the trampled subjects of imperial 
monarchs, the overtaxed, impoverished inhabitants of 
royal realms flying to our shores as an asylum from des- 
potisms that neither rest nor sleep ; it is not enough that 
he catches fugitive glimpses of the moral and political 
degradation of communities to whom God has given the 
sunniest skies, the purest fountains, the most fertile soil, 
and the most productive climate, but which are death- 
ridden by priestcraft and kingcraft, imbruted by centu- 
ries of indulgence, and dehumanized by a barbarism 
which has neither suns nor stars. lie must see with his 
eyes, hear with his ears, and feel with his heart. He 
must go down from the high moral elevation on which 
New England has been placed by Puritan faith and Pil- 
grim creed, by free institutions and an open Bible, down 
the successive steps of the pyramid of human society, 
and see mingled at its black base, the dregs of human 
nature, — men and women so little removed from brutes,, 
that the difference can hardly be detected, the human form 
alone distinguishing them from creatures as soulless as 
the sod. 

Let me point you to a few of these contrasts. Passing 
England, whose blood is our blood, whose history, whose 
literature, Avhose religion are all ours, our fatherland, 
into a war with which, the satanic press of this country, 
the mischief-breeding perverters of public sentiment, here, 
and the selfish, mercenary dependents on cotton crops, 
there, are endeavoring to plunge us, we come to France. 
The ocean separates us from that gay, vivacious country, 
where fountains sparkle in the sun and music vibrates 



on the air, and odors are wafted to the senses, and the 
people live in Elysian fields. But there is not more 
difference in the languages spoken, than in the institu- 
tions of the two countries. The faith and hope of the 
Frenchman are as unlike the foith and hope of the 
American, as light and darkness. That gay land is the 
theatre of constant revolutions ; the people overturn the 
Government, and assassinate the rulers for public amuse- 
ment. Within a dozen years that beautiful land has 
been ruled by a King, a President, a Mob and an Em- 
peror. The most fragrant flowers that grow in Paris are 
fattened by the gore of monarchs. Fountains gush out 
and sparkle where royal blood flowed in torrents ; mon- 
uments stand where the guillotine worked day and night, 
and a thoughtless crowd fill the streets along which the 
death cart rolled from the revolutionary tribunal to the 
sanguinary execution. A few years ago, I saw the best 
king France ever had, flying a mournful exile from the 
capital, on the embellishment of which he had lavished 
his fortune, amid hoarse cries of, Vive la BepubUque ! 
Vive la Gouvernement provisoire V^ while Republican 
hands wrote on the doors of the Tuileries and the 
Louvre, the significant words, — " Liberie^ Equalite, Fra- 
ternite. Since then those words have been obliterated, 
their sacred meaning is a myth in France, and that land 
rests under a despotism as severe, if not as odious, as 
relentless, if not as cruel, as any on earth. 

Sail down the blue Mediterranean and land in Italy. 
Follow the track of Francis II., the most despicable of 
the Bourbons, to Rome, or take the path of Garibaldi to 
Turin, and how little there is comparable with what we 
enjoy in New England. There are halls with miles of 
pictures in them ; galleries piled full of sculpture, but 



Qio real liheriy ijet. Eome, where great Crosar reigned, 
where Paul preached salvation, where Constantine flour- 
ished — Rome, whose citizenship was a royal honor, whose 
name was a terror to the world, whose flag waved in 
imperial supremacy over all lands — Rome, the birth- 
place of martyrs, the sepulchre of apostles, is but the 
filthy centre of a religion which has blazoned on its 
front, " Ignorance is the mother of devotion^ Her narrow 
streets are thronged by a Avorthless priesthood and a 
filthy lazzaroni ; in her dim, faded palaces sit conclaves 
of tyrants debating how best to stifle the freedom of the 
globe ; blasphemy is enthroned in her churches ; anti- 
christ presides at her altars which glisten with precious 
stones, while an oppressed and down-trodden people im- 
plore the aid of the civilized world to break the chains 
which have been on them for centuries. Italy presents 
to the world the singular spectacle of twenty-five mil- 
lions of people struggling to be free, yet with neither the 
virtue nor the intelligence essential to freedom. 

Embark again and sail to Egypt — land of mythology, 
cradle of learning and science. Tread where the Pha- 
raohs used to tread ; sit down among the antiquities of 
Memphis and Thebes ; ramble by daylight or moonlight 
amid the melancholy pomp of Karnac ; step softly on 
the dust of the ancient city of the Sun, and every where 
you behold evidences of degradation which you never 
imagined. Man is an ignorant, besotted creature, living 
in the most sensual abandonment, practising the grossest 
vices, and satisfied with the lowest forms of humanity. 
Woman, in turn, becomes the slave of her husband's indo- 
lence and the victim of his passions, condemned to 
drudgery and toil, her immortality denied, her com- 
plaints unheeded, and her happiness disregarded. Child- 



9 

hood is allowed to grow up without instruction, in beast- 
liness that leaves its marks on the physical constitution, 
in blindness, idiocy and stupef^iction, and on the moral 
nature in a conscience utterly diseased, and a heart ut- 
terly depraved. Moses and Pharaoh are dead ; the Is- 
raelites have gone out of the land, but the plagues are 
there yet, reigning from the banks of the beautiful Nile 
to the outward boundaries of the sun-scorched desert. 

Visit Greece^ the land of art, which every ambitious 
sophomore has invested with eternal charms, which has 
been eulogized in every gifted oration, from the days of 
Demosthenes until now, which has been woven into 
poetry and song — Greece^ the land of Lycurgus and 
Aristides, which stands forth to the scholar, what Pales- 
tine is to the Christian, and how little is there worthy 
of its past renown. The Acropolis full of broken 
images ; the Parthenon in ruins ; Mars' Hill without an 
apostle ; the Court of Areopagus broken up, the judges 
dead ; the pillars of Olympus falling down ; the The- 
seum battered by Turkish cannon balls — while within 
sight of these, toils an over-taxed, illiterate peasantry, 
and close by them rises the tasteless palace of the vile, 
unscrupulous despot, King Otho. 

Why, this modern Athens in which we live is a nobler 
spectacle than ancient Athens ; one humble temple, 
where Christ is preached and the cross is held up, is 
worth more to humanity than the thousand-godded Par- 
thenon ; Bunker Hill and Lexington are grander in their 
moral significance than Marathon and Thermopylre ; Fan- 
euil Hall is more eloquent in its historic meaning than 
the Acropolis was in the days of Demosthenes. While 
the children of the ancient Greeks are a poor, pitiable 
race, rich only in an ancestry which they dishonor, a lit- 



10 

erature, the beauties of which they are ignorant, and a 
historic prestige to which they are indifferent, the chil- 
dren of the Pilgrims are loyal to their principles, and on 
their graves, to-day, are contending for the precious 
legacy they bequeathed to us. 

Last of all, go to 'Palestine — the Ilohj Land I Journey 
on to Jerusalem, where Christ lived and died, where 
apostles preached and labored ; travel through all the 
country once covered with wonderful fertility, blest by 
industry, sanctified by religion, now the abode of a mis- 
erable, indolent, thieving, cowardly race, the hill-sides 
run out by neglect, the vallies fruitless by inattention, 
not a decent road from the hot, arid deserts of Philistia 
to Damascus, not a single newspaper, nor rail-car, nor 
telegraph in the land, whole towns, containing hundreds 
of inhabitants, where not a chair, nor a table, nor a 
comfortable bed, nor any evidence of civilization can be 
found, and you have reached, there in tiiat IM>i Land., 
every hill-top and valley of which has been consecrated 
and hallowed by the footsteps of the immaculate Son of 
God, the outward boundaries of civilization. The Hot- 
tentot and the Caffre can scarcely be more sunken and 
degraded than the Ishmaelitish inhabitants of Central 
Syria. 

The New Englander finds no place where he would 
like to live, no country for which he would exchange his 
own. There are royal burial places and pyramidal 
tombs, but in none of them would he wish to sleep the 
lasting sleep. As the Jew wishes to die within sight of 
Jerusalem, and the Moslem lies down within the .shadow 
of Mecca, so the American, turning from the veneral)le 
Abbey of Westminster, from the ambitious dome of the 
luvalideSj and from the rural glories of fair Pere-la- 



11 

Chaise, re:iches his anus to his loved ones here, ex- 
claiming, " Where thou cliest let me die, and there let 
me be buried." 

And why is it, that the American can find no clime 
comparable with his own ? What is there that so en- 
dears it to us all ? 

Certainly, it is not the fertility of its soil. That is 
coarse, rough, often barren and unfruitful. No man 
would ever settle in New England for its fertility. 
England is a garden of flowers ; France a vineyard of 
grapes ; Italy a paradise of beauty, compared w^ith this 
Commonwealth. 

It is not for the salubrity of its climate. Our Atlantic 
coast is dotted with consumptives' graves ; our Western 
prairies waft the burning fever and the shivering ague 
on every breeze ; our inland lakes produce a miasma 
almost as fatal as the Roman Campagna ; while the 
South, with every returning season, invites the soft, yel- 
low footsteps of the plague. 

It cannot be on account of its works of art, its antique 
remains, or its lengthened history. Florence and Dres- 
den have galleries of paintings and sculpture ; Rome 
has its Coliseum and Athens its Parthenon ; Egypt has 
its ancient history, its mythological record, and Pales- 
tine its pilgrim shrines. Our country has none of these. 
Our history dates with the Mayflower, and is but a little 
more than two hundred years old ; our flag has not seen 
a century since its stars were set, and the only pilgrim 
shrine we have — Mount Vernon ^ we were told in Syria, 
but I find falsely, had lately been rifled by robbers of its 
sacred bones. 

We love our native land for something better than a 
lengthened history, or the crumbling ruins of antiquity. 



12 

We can boast of something better than battle fields and 
castles. We present to tlie world tlie only illustration 
of constitntional government, unencumbered by tradition- 
ary rights, privileged classes and hereditary claims, 
that it has ever seen ; the only specimen of a genuine 
republic ever known. The ancient republics were such 
only in name. The grand idea of constitutional liberty, 
wide apart from license on the one hand, and despotism 
on the other, tliey did not reach. That idea is ours — 
embodied in our government, illustrated in our history, 
exemplified in our experience, enunciated in our Consti- 
tion and laws. That idea we have had the greatness to 
attain unto ; the events of the next few months are to 
show whether we have the integrity to preserve it. 

This constitutional government of ours insures to us 
freedom of conscience beyond the power of any church 
or inquisitor ; freedom of speech beyond the interfer- 
ence of any mob censorship ; freedom of the press be- 
yond any ecclesiastical or political despotisms. It makes 
all our citizens politically equal, and furnishes liberty, 
enlarged and salutary, to all who come within its influ- 
ence. However much we sometimes fall below this, 
these blessings are the legitimate results of the working 
of our institutions. However barbarisms that have been 
entailed upon us by dead or decaying monarchies, or 
barbarisms that are the fruits of human wickedness may 
for a time defeat the operation of the best of laws or 
the purest of principles, the form of government be- 
queathed to us by our Withers cannot fail to work out 
for us a noble independence and a sure prosperity. 

Beneath such a government our population has in- 
creased to thirty millions of souls ; sovereign States, — 
some of them too sovereign to be loyal to the mother 



13 

th;it reared them, stretch from the surf-beaten rocks of 
the Athuitic to the gold besprinkled sand of the Pacific ; 
our canvas whitens every sea, and our flag waves in 
every port ; our manufactories have arisen like magic 
on the banks of our rivers, and populous cities thrive on 
the shores of our mighty inland seas. Our national 
wealth is as enormous as our pride, and our ambition is 
bounded only by shoreless deeps. 

Keeping pace with free institutions, our Protestant 
religion has pushed its conquests in all directions. The 
Bible has been made the foundation of our laws, the 
code of our morals, and the ethics of our lives. In every 
village and hamlet Christ has been held up as an aton- 
ing Saviour ; the plan of salvation has been unfolded in 
its vastness and glory, and we stand out before the world 
as the Christian nation that best illustrates soul liberty, 
as well as political freedom, unencumbered by any state 
church, or any government recognized creed. 

Hence it is that the American, wherever he goes, 
turns back to his own country with feelings of patriotic 
love and pride. Whatever he may see to admire else- 
where, this is his home. The land of Washington is 
dearer than the Via Sacra of the Cresars, and the Consti- 
tution of Washington is an instrument more sublime than 
the code of Lycurgus. With patriotism burning in his 
bosom, he cannot look upon the flag waving among the 
masts in any harbor, or floating in the sunlight over any 
consulate, without a thrill of pleasure. It is the ensign 
of his country ; that country is America ; and America, at 
least in organic structure, is morally and religiously free. 

The question comes up, and a very significant ques- 
tion it is, in these times, — Is this country worth preserv- 
ing ? Is this Union, in which are bound up the hopes 



14 

of millions of human beings now on earth and millions 
yet unborn, which is so intimately connected with the 
welfare of the whole race, the spread of the gospel over 
the globe, and the liberty of mankind, worth contend- 
ing for ? 

I return to you in the midst of civil war. I find hos- 
tile armies traversing our country. I find a man's foes 
to be they of his own household, and my soul shudders 
at the prospect yet before us. I venture to say that 
such an unreasonable, unnatural, merciless war was never 
before entered upon. The rebellion of Absalom against 
David, his royal sire, his mad endeavor to overturn the 
Hebrew throne, does not approach the enormity of this 
sanguinary conflict. The Sepoy rebellion, in India, was 
not as inexcusable as this w^ar waged against the Fed- 
eral Government by States whose soil we have purchased, 
whose firesides we have defended, whose debts we have 
paid, whose insults we have forgiven, whose injuries we 
have borne, and, alas ! — God forgive us, — whose slaves 
we have caught and returned. Never since God made 
the world, has a brighter and more beautiful flag been 
drabbled in a dirtier soil than that which fell pierced 
with swords in the streets of Richmond ; never has trea- 
son worked to a meaner purpose, and with more vil- 
lainous instruments, than that which had South CaroUna 
nullification for its hydra head, and the Montgomery abor- 
tion for its cloven foot and forked tail. The name of Ar- 
nold, which has been hung with a sable cloud, now 
begins to glow with lurid light, in comparison with those 
that in inky black, are inscribed beside it ; and the Ro- 
man Catiline looks saintlike, compared with some of the 
men who have plotted the niin of this great nation, and 



15 

who, to consummate the purpose, have been willing to 
drench the land in innocent blood. 

The first intelligence we received of the commence- 
ment of hostilities, was in Syria. We were told that eight 
thousand chivalrous men had overcome a half-starved 
garrison of seventy soldiers, and divided the immortal 
honor of the exploit between them ; that Massachusetts 
blood was soaking into the pavements of Baltimore ; 
that the American flag, which no sovereign in Europe 
would dare insult, had been hooted by a mob, pierced 
with swords, trampled under foot, and rent to pieces ; 
that an army of rebels was marching on Washington, to 
haul down the banner, every star, and stripe, and thread, 
and dot of which is redolent with freedom, and put up a 
bastard ensign, a piratical insignia, in every flap of 
which the world should hear the crack of the whip, the 
clank of chains and the groans of the negro. 

And that was all we heard ! The account was meagre 
and did not tell us how such treason was to be met ; 
how such rebellion was to be quelled, and how such a 
government was to be preserved. A week, — a long and 
painful week must elapse ere we could hear again. It 
was a week of harrowing suspense, and I assure you that 
as excited as you were here, your suspense could not 
have been as dreadful as ours. The very silence of the 
Syrian desert was eloquent with forebodings and fears. 
We questioned ! Have the fires of patriotism all gone out ? 
Has the love of liberty fled from Plymouth Rock to And 
a home in Italy, Hungary and Poland. Are the de- 
scendants of the men of Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and 
Valley Forge all dead ? Will the people rise in their 
majesty and defend the Constitution and vindicate the 
flag, or will the freemen of the North yield once more, — 



16 

yield forever ? and let that base Palmetto rag float over 
the capitol, that counterfeit Montgomery constitution ex- 
tend to the St. Lawrence, and that arrogant Georgian 
fulfil the boast he made that he would call the roll of 
his slaves on Bunker Hill ? 

I must tell you that I was afraid of the North, of New 
England, and especially of Boston. I knew that the 
North had a conscience, but I also knew that warehouses 
and manufactories had been built upon it ten stories 
high. I knew that New England had a heart, but I 
was well aware that it was all covered up with bales of 
cotton, boxes of shoes and cargoes of tea, and was afraid 
that its life-throes could not cast off the mighty incubus. 

The week rolled away, — a week of suspense, and we 
held our breath with pain. We had reason to suspect 
this now vindicated metropolis. The scene that was 
shimmering before my eyes, when I sailed, was that dis- 
graceful mob in Tremont Temple, where, in obedience to 
the behest of South Carolina, free speech was trampled 
down and lay bleeding in the dust. The last sounds that 
floated on the air were the echoes of those compromise 
speeches made in Faneuil Hall, tempered and toned to 
be read in old Virginia. 

The week expired, and behind the bar of the Ottoman 
Bank in Beyroot, ten of us gathered over a pile of Eng- 
lish and American newspapers ; our letters lay unopened 
before us. Wives and children were forgotten ; our 
bleeding country was alone remembered. The intelli- 
gence was all we could desire. It told us that the Pil- 
grim spirit was yet alive ; that everywhere at home an 
intense enthusiasm was enkindled ; that party ties were 
all sundered, and party interests all forgotten ; that 
our young men had risen to arms, and our old men 



17 

had blessed them as they went forth ; that women and 
chiUU'en were making garments, banners and tents for 
the sokliers ; that the churches were hung with the okl 
flag — the Stripes and Stars — God bless it ! that from the 
farthest river in Maine to the prairies of the West, the 
people were rising to trample the traitors down ; that 
Sunday, God's day, had been taken to do God's work ; 
that timid, conservative preachers, who had been deaf 
and dumb while all this mischief was brewing, had come 
to the front of the altar, shouting, " The sword of the 
Lord and of Washington ;" that a long vascillating 
Cabinet had been raised, and cast on the great waves of 
popular might against the brazen gates of treason ; that 
the old flag, borne by ten thousand hands, was to go 
straight through Baltimore, and be lifted up upon the 
Federal capitol, and wave there in the sight of all na- 
tions, the symbol of Constitutional Government and 
human freedom, until treason was overturned and sla- 
very was extinct. 

This was enough ! Never since the day when God 
forgave my sins, and made me a new creature, have I 
felt so willing to die, as then, — so able, to say sincerely, 
" Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for 
mine eyes have seen thy salvation." We read those 
columns down with choked utterance and sobbins: voices. 

o 

The tears streamed down our cheeks, while clerks and 
bankers looked on amazed ; we grasped the hands of 
each other ; we laughed and wept by turns, and rushed 
out to make the French camp, close by, and through 
which we rode on our way to Damascus, ring with our 
national anthem : — 

" IMy country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty. 
Of thee I sine; 



18 

Land where my fathers died, 
Land of the rilgriiu's pride, 
From every mountain side. 
Let freedom ring." 

Yon know what has transpired since. You haA^e lived 
an age within these hist four months ; events have burnt 
themselves into the staple of time ; have been written 
in letters of blood on the pages of history. AVhen pos- 
terity reads, what a chapter it will be ! Treason for 
thirty years working in the Cabinet, in the Army and in 
Congress ; fraud plundering the national treasury and 
the public arsenals ; coivardice assailing with eight thou- 
sand men, and eighty thousand still behind, a half- 
starved garrison of seventy men ; a ferocious mob mur- 
dering unoffending Massachusetts soldiers, while on their 
way to defend the Federal capital ; a letter of marque 
issued by an ambitious pretender, for the encouragement 
of piracy ; tlie sacred tomb of the Father of his country 
threatened with robbery, and, as if it were not enough to 
tear Washington's constitution to pieces, destroy his 
country and trail his banner in the dust, his ashes must 
be cast upon the altars of the oppression which he hated, 
to satisfy the Moloch of slavery. And then scene fol- 
lowed scene, 

" Blood trod upon the heels of blood ; 
Revenge in desperate mood at midnight met 
Eevenge. War brayed to war," 

until now, in the harvest moon. Death centres as if it 
were a pivot upon the ridge of the AUeghanies, and 
flaps his raven wings over all the land. The nation 
seems to have been passing over a gulf of horrors, upon 
a bridge of sighs, all the way from John Brown's gibbet 
to Manassas Gap. Who can count the widows' tears as 



19 

tlicy fall ? Who can describe the desolated homes ? 
Who can number the silent graves ? Who can tell the 
ruin of character, the blasting of hope, and the fearful 
crimes that will follow, like a retinue of devils, in the 
track of this fratricidal war ? And what name will his- 
tory give to him who stands forth as the acknowledged 
leader of this rebellion, on whose hands the blood is clot- 
ting now, as she enrolls him on her catalogue with Nina 
Sahib and the murderers of the Maronites ? 

And now what of the future ? Watchman, what of the 
night ? Can any one of you see any stars amid the por- 
tentous blackness of this hour ? You, who stand in the 
midst of prostrate business prospects, who walk in the 
gloom which hangs over the exchange and the market- 
place, who are menaced by failure and bankruptcy ; you, 
whose honest dues have been repudiated by your South- 
ern creditors ; you, who clung to guilty South Carolina, 
praying her to be reasonable, shielding her from reproach, 
until she turned and stabbed you, and sent you home 
bleeding and wounded ; you, who apologized for the 
South until she had well nigh brought down the temple 
of our liberties, a heap of ruins ; tell me, do you see 
any rays of light ? 

It seems to me that a division of our country is an 
impossibility. We cannot have two or more republics on 
this soil. God and nature have forbidden it. Neither 
of them, could they be established, would attain to any 
considerable respectability in the great family of nations, 
and between them would be perpetual war. A peaceful 
separation seems to be rendered impossible by all the 
exigencies of the case, and hence there can be but two 
ways of settling this question, — it is a dreadful alternative. 

The Jird way, is to compromise, yields surrender. A 



20 

government extending over a wide range of country, 
must, to some extent, be one vast system of compromises. 
When the interests of one part conflict with the inter- 
rests of another part ; when opinions differ, and men 
cannot see alike, compromise and concession are the le- 
gitimate modes of adjustment. But no government can 
with any safety compromise the principles on which it is 
founded ; to do that is self-destruction ; and there are 
some questions which can never be made matters of com- 
promise. The troubles in which we now are, are the 
results of concessions in matters of principle, which 
should have been settled by the infinite standard of 
right, and by the great law of God. We had a monster 
in our midst, and we thought the best way to manage 
him was to feed him, pat him, and let him have his own 
way. So every time he roared we threw him a bone to 
still him, and all the time he was grovving strong. 
When we saw his glaring eyes we threw him the Mis- 
souri Compromise, and still he grew. When he growled 
we threw down before him the Fugitive Slave Law, 
and yet he grew. When he became more terrible we 
fixed the Kansas-Nebraska bill to please him, and when 
we had nothing more to cast to him, this monster, whom 
we fondled and fed, came upon us and tore our flag to 
pieces, trampled our Constitution in the dust, repudiated 
honest contracts, and seizing with his infernal claws the 
pillars of the fabric of our freedom, endeavored to pull 
the whole structure down into one common ruin. That 
monster is Slavcri/ — a system which has been the cause 
of our alienations, the source of our misunderstandings, 
and the plague of our nation from the time its corner 
stone was laid. Some men seem to have an evil 
genius — a bad angel, that moves them to evil, that 



21 

sweeps away their good intentions, that spoils every 
honest endeavor, and destroys them in spite of themselves. 
Slavery has been the evil genius of our nation ; the blot 
on our liberty ; the stain on our banner ; the millstone 
in our ascent to a glorious destiny. And yet the legis- 
lation of our country, for a half century, has been little 
more than a series of compromises with this evil spirit, 
and the result we have in the ruin and disgrace Avhicli 
stare us in the face to-day. 

And yet we shall hear of compromise again ere long ; 
the old cheat is not yet dead, and the moment the en- 
thusiasm of victory is over, men will begin to yield. 
" Feed the monster," they will say. " Throw him a 
few more bones ; let him grow a little ; give him more 
life." Politicians, who want something upon which to 
climb into office ; business men, who feel the pressure of 
these evil times ; quiet citizens, who are tired of war, 
and mistaken theorizers, who really think slavery a 
source of national strength, will begin to cry — " Feed 
the monster ; let him live, though he has taught our 
senators treason, and shed the blood of our soldiers — let 
him live." 

. But unless we find some means to ensure the peaceful, 
constitutional, honest extinction of slavery, we keep the 
cause of all our woes. Settle this civil war by compro- 
mise, and it will not be ten years before this scene will be 
repeated, even if the breach be now healed. It will not 
be ten years before slavery will let loose upon us u new 
tide of blood. 

The victory we need to gain, is not simply to crush 
out the spirit of rebellion, to set up the flag over the 
bastions of dismantled Sumter, and drive traitors out of 
Kichmond and Charleston ! Do all that, mend the 



22 

breach, heal the divisions, bind up the wounds, present 
to the worUl an unstained flag and an undivided nation- 
ality, and if slavery has not received its death-blow, you 
are a vanquished people ; the precious blood you have 
shed has been spilt in vain ; the brave men, who have 
lost their lives, have been thrown away ; the millions of 
money you have expended will be worse than squan- 
dered, and you will come out of the battle with the heel 
of the monster on your neck. 

And what is there about slavery that any man in the 
North should want to keep it ? lias it not corrupted 
your public men, perjured your judges and senators, plun- 
dered your treasury, murdered your citizens, soiled your 
flag, trampled on your Constitution, perverted your his- 
tory, and sown your fields with blood ? Has it not done 
all this, and more than this ? And can you afford to 
give it new lease of life, even though you pacify it now ? 
Do you dare to lengthen its cords, and allow it to gather 
strength, that it may rise again in four, eight, or twelve 
years, anew to plunder your national treasury, destroy 
your national honor and credit, blast your business and 
prosperity, butcher your wives and children, and again 
overflow the land with blood ? Why, how many civil 
wars can America stand ? How often can it go through 
periods like this, without having its light quenched in 
blackness and blood ? Let your government enter into 
any compromise that will strengthen the hands of sla- 
very, and you rush upon your doom. You take up a 
controversy with the religion of the Bible, and the con- 
science of the whole civilized world. You go, with your 
eyes open, into a hopeless war with omnipotent God. 

Why, what is God teaching us now ? Don't you hear 
his voice ? From Sumter's dismantled bastions don't 



23 



you hear it ?— " Let the oppressed go free." From the 
blood-wet pavements of Baltimore don't you hear it 1— 
" Let the oppressed go free." From the fearful slaugh- 
ter of Bull Run, from that brave day that mysteriously 
lapsed into panic and flight, don't you hear it ?— " Let 
the oppressed go free." From victory and defeat, from 
the beleagured camp and the murderous charge, don't 
you hear it ?— " Let the oppressed go free." Every 
slave that comes to us, saying, " knock off these chains," 
is a plea from God. Every drop of blood shed, and every 
unburied body left on Southern fields, is a heaven high 
demand for the extinction of slavery. 

I say, then, that compromise with slavery is a mad, 
ruinous, hopeless method of settlement. You who urge 
it, are the scribes who would write in gore the doom of 
American liberty, and quench every star that now shines 
in the horizon of our country's future. 

The second method of settlement, is to conquer a 
peace. This is the dreadful alternative— »/f^ it out. 
This can be done. With twenty millions of Northern 
freemen against eight millions of Southrons, embarrassed 
by four millions of slaves, eftectually blockaded, desti- 
tute of credit, and opposed to God, the ultimate result, 
notwithstanding the late defeat, cannot be doubtful. 
God may punish us awhile for our comphcity with sla- 
very, for that great sin has been defended by the press 
and the pulpit, and strengthened by political and com- 
mercial alliances. He may allow us to suffer until 
our national pride is humbled and our national vanity is 
mortified, and we recognize his hand in our history. 
But when a united North goes marching down from the 
graves of the Pilgrims, with libert// written on the 
banners, to contend for loyalty against treason ; law 



24 

against anarchy ; government against barbarism ; free- 
dom against slavery, the result is sure. And such 
a war, not for ambition and lust, is a holy war — a 
grand necessity forced on us by Providence. God has 
driven us from paper compromises to the tented field. 
Words and pens are powerless to settle the contest now. 
The unsheathed sword and the soldier's charge are the 
only compromises. 

" If infamy were but a word, not thing, 

With words we'd meet it and with bandied blame 

Advance great Freedom's language, 'till the shame 

Cowered before Persuasion's iron ring. 

For eloquence can only strike and sting 

Where mind is baffled, and like hunted game 

Tired by pursuit and growing weakly tame, 

Yields to the fatal shot its wearied wing. 

But with Rebellion, reeling to and fro, 

Drunk with a mad despair, it is not so. 

And words would vitalize as quick the dead 

As compromise a peace Avith such a foe. 

Then is a nation's duty plainly read — 

Then is a nation's eloquence — a blow !" 

But from such an alternative, I know there is a shrink- 
ing in every soul. I am not a man of blood, and I shud- 
der as I contemplate the cost of the struggle now in 
progress — the cost, not in gold and silver, but in human 
lives, in widows' tears, in wrecked characters, in all that 
darkens the pages of history, and sickens the soul as it 
reads the record. 

There can be no glory in this war, however it may re- 
sult, and whatever brilliant deeds may be done. There 
was glory at Thermopylie and Marathon ; there was glory 
at Austerlitz and Lodi ; there was glory at Lexington 
and Bunker Hill ; there was glory at Montebello and 
Solferino, but there can be none in this cruel, civil war. 



25 

Our great nation at its close will weep as David did over 
Absalom. There will be no monuments erected to its 
heroes ; there will be no preans sung to its conquerors. 
No American will ever wish to read its record, and we 
shall pray to have it forgotten. It is a fratricidal war ; 
brother is butchering brother ; it is our own blood that 
is flowing. 

And yet, dreadful as war is, it is better than dishonor ; 
better than disunion ; better than the lot to which the 
mad South was determined to push us. The existence 
of this Union to mankind, is worth all the blood we have 
to shed, all the treasures we have to spend. The main- 
tenance of the Constitution is worthy of any sacrifice, 
except the sacrifice of honor. Not half a decade of 
years has passed away since Gov. Wise, now a trai- 
tor, pronounced that document " A work of glory, 
and a work of inspiration," and added, what we are 
willing to endorse, that " no man from Hamilton, and 
Jay, and Madison — from Edmund Randolph, who had 
the chief hand in making it — and he was a Virginian — 
the writers of it, the authors of it, and you who have 
lived under it from 1789 to this year of our Lord 1858, 
none of your fathers' sons has ever measured the height, 
or the depth, or the length, or the breadth of the wisdom 
of that Constitution." That Constitution which the ex- 
ecutioner of John Brown declared *' a glory and an in- 
spiration," " an unmeasured height, depth, length, 
breadth of wisdom," we are endeavoring to preserve for 
our children and a coming age. And preserve it we 
will. In the name of God, and in behalf of liberty, we 
will preserve it. To quote the enthusiastic declaration of 
an ecclesiastic of the Methodist church, — " We will take 
our glorious flag — the flag of our country — and nail it 

4 



26 

just beloiv the cross ! That is high enough ! There let it 
wave as it waved of old. Around it we will gather : 
' First Christ's, then our country's.' " 

If the present generation is beggared, posterity will 
rise up and bless us as the benefactors of mankind. Why, 
destroy this government, and you destroy the grandest 
hope of liberty ; you extinguish the light which is beck- 
oning on the enslaved millions of Italy, Hungary, Turkey 
and Poland to constitutional freedom. If there is no 
other way to save this government than fighting, dread- 
ful as that is, then love of country and patriotism, aye, 
and religion too, would bid us fight. And to just this 
issue have we come — to compromise with the monster 
which has so long ruled us, and thus insure the destruc- 
tion of this Union in less than a quarter of a century, or 
to settle now and forever that not another inch of ground 
can be given to slavery, that the North is no longer to 
be made a negro hunting ground, that this nation, in its 
broad extent and its grand proportions, is the heritage of 
freedom, and not the Bastile of oppression. 

And now let me indicate three things which should be 
accomplished by the dreadful discipline through which 
we are passing. 

Fo'st. As I have just said, we should become, in 
fact, as we are in name, a free people. Some plan should 
be devised for the peaceful, honorable emancipation of 
the slaves. For the good of the laboring people of the 
North ; for the good of the masters, and the welfare of 
their families in the South ; for the good of the op- 
pressed ; for the good of mankind, chattel bondage should 
be extinguished. I say this without any reference to 
the negroes themselves. They in the South enslaved 
are a national crime and curse ; free in the North, they 



27 

are at present a public misfortune. In consequence of 
the wrongs done them, they are, to a great extent, an 
indolent, dependent race, and were they all in Africa, 
from whence they have been stolen, and for leaving 
which they are not responsible, it would be better for 
them and for us. I argue this now, not as a moral 
question, but in the lower light of political economy. 
We must get rid of slavery to save the Union, the Con- 
stitution and the flag. 

When the Bourbon throne was overturned in France, 
the people saw the black, frowning walls of the Bastile 
looking down upon them. They said, " The Republic 
is not safe w^hile that stands." With the gathered might 
of a tempest, they poured themselves upon it and demol- 
ished it, and sent a fragment to every town in France. 
The Bastile of human bondage, in which treason has 
been hatched, rebellion suckled, honor sacrificed, and 
from the battlements of which have burst upon you the 
terrors of this unreasonable war, yet stands. And while 
it stands the Republic will not be safe. It is a Bastile 
menacing the liberties of the nation, and the choice 
offered this great people is the destruction of the one or 
the other. 

Second. We should emerge from this discipline with 
higher ideas of national honor and integrity. It should 
be established once and forever, that the government is 
not to be tampered with, nor the Constitution violated 
with impunity. Our own people and all our adopted 
citizens should learn, in lessons of fire and blood, if need 
be, that he who lifts his hand against the government is 
a traitor, and meets a traitor's doom. The ship of state 
should be committed to the best hands we have. We 
have given her up to pirates, and they have tried to 



28 

scuttle her in mid ocean ; we have called on board in- 
competent pilots, and they have stranded her on the 
rocks of anarchy and ruin. Our rulers, for years past, 
have been selected too much from a class of paltry poli- 
ticians. HoAV mean some of them look beside the great 
statesmen of Europe. How few Russells, Peels, Pal- 
merstons. Broughams, Disraelis and Gladstones we 
have ! How few Lamartines, Cavours and Ricasolis ap- 
pear in our troubles. I do not say we have no great 
statesmen. That would not be true. We have as noble 
a line of public men as ever appeared in any land. But 
we have too far overlooked the merits of our great men, 
left them in political obscurity, while we have elevated 
men to place and power, who have great capacity only 
to dishonor the trust reposed in them, who are gifted 
only in the lowest arts of party huckstering, and who 
never arrived to the higher plane of the patriot and 
the statesman. This has been our ruin and our shame. 

If we are capable of learning any thing from bitter ex- 
perience, this knowledge should bring us out of the fire 
with loftier integrity, and sublimer ideas of government, 
law, and national honor. We should feel that the pub- 
lic weal is a thing too sacred to be intrusted to charla- 
tans and demagogues, who have ascended, through im- 
pudence, from the mud, where they were born, to sta- 
tions of trust which they dishonor. 

Third. Another result of our discipline should be to 
make our whole people more thoughtful, sober, and de- 
pendent on God. We are a jaunty, showy race. Our men 
are more impulsive and fickle than the English ; our wo- 
men more thoughtless and extravagant than the French. 
From this struggle every man, woman and child should 
come out more thoughtful, serious, economical and trust- 



29 

worthy, with more rational ideas of the majesty and im- 
portance of our being. When we have been reproved 
for our fast habits, we have said, " 0, we are a young 
nation ; we have the vivacity of youth ; we shall settle 
down and be steady by and by." I have seen a young 
mother, with her babe in her arms, all life, animation 
and happiness, gay as a lark, and thoughtless as the but- 
terfly. But death came and took the child, led that 
young mother through life's most bitter experience ; 
took off her flowers and clothed her in sable. From that 
hour that mother was an altered being. She matured 
while passing through the flood ; she emerged from that 
sorrow a woman I — she was a c/iiM before. Her disci- 
pline had lifted her up to a great world of reality, and 
henceforth she was more fit to perform life's solemn 
duties here, or walk with the angels above. 

So our nation, the young bride of Liberty, the gay, 
dancing creature, brilliant as the stars of her own flag, 
has received a bloody baptism. Years of experience have 
passed over her in one long, dreadful night, and she 
should come out of it matured, chastened and sanctified. 
Every man should be more a man, and every woman 
should be more a woman from this hour. It is a disci- 
pline that should elevate, ennoble and dignify our people, 
and make the nation greater than it ever was before. 

Of course, in a Christian assembly like this, I need 
not argue that this discipline should lead us to more de- 
pendence on God, to a clearer recognition of his hand in 
this bitter contest. In all the movements of the past he 
appears, and in the carnage and strife by which we are 
surrounded, he is forcing us to acknowledge him, as, the 
God of nations and of armies. We must be right with 
him, and he must be on our side, or we cannot succeed. 



30 

The trust reposed in some of our Generals is sublime ; 
but our trust must be higher than men — in Gocl. 

And, now, one word more, for I shall not often trouble 
you with war sermons. The time for pulpit preaching 
on this subject has gone by. If the American pulpit 
had been true to itself, for the last twenty-five years, 
this thing would not have happened. The preachers now 
are at Manassas Gap and Harper's Ferry. 

The impression exists Avidely in Europe that this na- 
tion is stranded ; that the Republic has gone to ruin ; 
that the bubble of democracy has burst. This opinion 
has been expressed in Parliament, echoed by the press, 
bandied in the streets. Doubtless, some in England 
would like to have it so. To the titled aristocracy of 
Great Britain, our government is a standing reproach ; 
to the army and navy it is a constant remembrancer of the 
most severe defeat those proud powers have ever ex- 
perienced ; to the people, it is, to some extent, an object 
of popular dislike and spleen. But, while this is so, 
there are millions in England who wish us well, and who 
pray for our prosperity. But they can see no principle in 
this conflict. We have studiously concealed the fact, that 
liberty is the end at which we aim. We stand in a false 
position before the philanthropists of Europe. We have 
told them that it Avas not to enlarge the area of freedom 
that we are contending, but for nationality, to subju- 
gate rebels, to quell mutinies. Can we then be surprised 
that the manufacturing and commercial classes of Eng- 
land, who have so much at stake, should desire peace, 
even, at the cost to us, of a division of this country ? 
They think the experiment of self-government a failure. 
But it remains to be seen whether we have virtue, intel- 
ligence and piety enough to save the country from ruin. 



31 

Nothing could be more disastrous to the world than the 
permanent dismemberment of this confederacy. It is a 
picture too awful to contemplate. We feel as Daniel Web- 
ster felt as he exclaimed : — "When my eyes shall be turn- 
ed to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not 
see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments 
of a once glorious Union ; on States dissevered, discordant, 
belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, 
it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and 
lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous Ensign of 
the Republic, now known and honored throughout the 
earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies 
streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or 
polluted, nor a single star obscured." 

This Union is worth too much to be destroyed without 
a struggle. It cost too much to be surrendered without 
an effort. True, the America of the future cannot be like 
the America of the past. We are to face realities that 
we have dreamed of, but never feared. We must have 
a stronger government, a standing army, and a national 
debt. But these, with freedom, can be endured. Pre- 
pared for all these things, we should do our work now. 
If we have national crimes, remove them ; if we have 
rebels, subdue them ; if we have traitors, hang them. 
The government must be supported ; treason must be 
rooted out and extinguished ; secession presses and 
pulpits closed up — not by mob violence, indeed, that is 
always cowardly and dangerous, but by the strong arm 
of civil or martial law. The length and breadth of this 
contest must be measured, and we must be prepared 
for the sacrifice of our commerce and our manufactures, 
and for the contribution of all we have. If our land be- 
comes a desert, only that the flag be left flying over it, 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




g2 012 026 254 6' 

we must be prepared for that ; we must adopt the motto, 
" The union must and shall be preserved." Richard 
Fuller said in a speech made a few months ago, " If 
this Union is broken to pieces, I will put up the stars 
and stripes over my house and say, ' I am an American 
still.' " So should we feel ; so should we act. 

This country belongs not to us alone ; it belongs to 
the Past ; it belongs to the Future ; it belongs to Hu- 
manity, to Liberty, to God. Look at that flag — those 
stars and stripes ! it is not yours nor mine ! That flag 
belongs to the world ; it is the ensign of the oppressed 
of all lands. This soil we tread ! it is not yours nor 
mine. It does not belong to the cotton lords of the 
South, nor to the merchant princes of the North. It be- 
longs to constitutional government and human happiness. 
And it should be settled now and forever, that this gov- 
ernment cannot be broken up ; it should be understood 
by every man in Virginia and South Carolina, and in 
Massachusetts, too, that the Constitution is too sacred a 
contract to be trampled under foot. It is too late now 
for the boys' play with which our politicians have amused 
us. From this time, whether it shall be peace or war, 
there will be work for the sturdiest, truest manhood. 
The hopes of constitutional liberty are suspended on this 
Union, and as we look at her in her perilled greatness, 
we can but catch the prophetic words of one of our poets : 

" Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 

Humanity, with all its fears, 

With all the hopes of future years, 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate !" 



Abrary of congress 



012 026 264 6 .^ 






